


Onyx and Scarlet

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Betrayal, Civil War AU, Codependency, Gen, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4744559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My mind had an idea because of AOU and Civil War and Maximoffs. It is mostly pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Onyx and Scarlet

Vision is patrolling, when he spots the small bead of scarlet slipping into the tower. He knows that shade of scarlet, that precise region of red in the great scale of it, and flies, with the softest sigh, toward Wanda.

Her way is swift, hovering, darting up the elevator shaft, twisting tech to her whims, to get through the tower. Vision does not know who she seeks, and decides to hang back just enough to find out.

He is pleasantly surprised that she does not make a beeline, scarlet in ready hands, to Stark’s room. Instead, she turns towards his.

It was not that Vision needed a room, really. More that they felt they had to give him one. His room held a spare Cradle, one which could repair him if necessary, or heal the others. _Does she need healing?_ Vision wonders, before remembering, _They have their own Cradles_.

He hovers, golden gem dim, made hidden by the darkness of his cloak, as Wanda slips a small vial into the Cradle, and powers it on. Vision watches, and Vision waits.

 

* * *

 

 _Pietro_.

Wanda can see her brother’s form taking shape in the Cradle, lit up in blue and silver and green from the Cradle’s lights. Within her mind she can feel him, all she has gathered into herself, of herself, from herself. All the memories her brother ever gave her, all the thoughts he sent her, all the pieces of himself that were hers, and the half a mind that he had sent, scurrying to hers for safety, in the midst of the Battle of Novi Grad.

 _Soon_ , She thinks. _Soon you will have a home again. Will live again_.

She dares not continue this fight, this Civil War of superheroes, without her brother there. Anchoring herself for most a year without him had already strained her more than she could bear and this new battle, all screaming sides and split society and worse riots even than Novi Grad… she needed Pietro back, she needed him back more than anything.

She has felt her mind unfurling, curling into spaces in the edges and the gaps of her cathedral. In the abandoned shrines, the relics and the monstrances, and the nook that holds her cathedral’s communion wine. She is but keeper of this place, and not its cleric. She has no right to the power they hold.

And yet, and yet. Her mind slips. Her mind washes out its blood, leaves only grey stone stained cerise, shadowed black, and the gold of ancient idols. Her mind whispers a blasphemous _Dies Irae_ instead of singing a glorious _Te Deum_ , and Wanda fears without her brother to ground her she is lost.

Her hands stroke over the Cradle which holds his body. Her scarlet strokes the glowing silver orb which holds his mind. Wanda breathes in, breathes out, and tries not to think about what she will inevitably have to do.

Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, her dark-self rises. She is clad as a queen, scarlet crown, scarlet cape, dripping in glittering gold, and onyx so dark it is almost empty space. She looks through the windows of Wanda’s cathedral, looks at Pietro’s remaking body, and smiles a predatory smile.

 _Mine_ , she says.           

 ** _MINE_**. Wanda pushes her back, back into the statue the dark-self had carved herself from, and lifts herself to the window. Scarlet wings spread wide, dripping blood. The dark-self may be a queen, but Wanda, Wanda has made herself an angel and, fallen or risen, an angel can overrule a monarch. **_Mine_** , Wanda says. _You will **never** have him._

 

* * *

 

Wanda is shaking. Vision almost steps from his cloak of shadows, even stretches out a magenta hand, before remembering Wanda _is on the other side_. It goes against his every screaming instinct, to deny her help or comfort. He can see her mind, scarlet scything into scarlet, stabbing shades of red and black leaving gold haemorrhaging into the architecture of Wanda’s mind. Something is tearing her apart from the inside, and Vision wants, desperately, to stretch out his hand, and give her the Stone.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s wings spread wide. The dark-self shakes rock and stone from her skin as it tries to trap her in again, and laughs. _You cannot stop me_ , She says, simply. _I am you. If he is yours, he is mine, and when I subsume you he will be only mine_.

 _You will **never** take me_ , Wanda says. **_MY_** _mind. **MY** brother. **MY** friends, **MY** world, **MINE**. You are part and not the whole, and only a whole could take me. You will **never** take me. You will **never** have him._

The dark-self starts to smile, starts to laugh, and chokes when Wanda sends a scarlet wave of blood. Shadows weave into it, gold solidifies through, and Wanda tears apart the stone form of her cathedral to lock the dark-self into an oubliette again. _Forget her_ , She tells her mind. _Forget her shape. Forget her side of the scarlet. There is only **me**._

Wanda’s hands wrap around the silver of her brother’s mind, around silver curves and curls that rise from the sides in wings almost like hers. They are leaves where hers are liquid, silver where hers are gold and blue where hers are scarlet. They are her brother’s and it almost makes her want to sob, to know that she will cut them.

 

* * *

 

Vision steps into the room, and even under his cloak of shadows he knows Wanda sees him.

Something in her shoulders relaxes. “Vision.”

“Wanda.” The android doesn’t really know what to say to her. He recalls the battle of Novi Grad, remembers the piece of memory he took from Ultron’s last body. Wanda, scarlet and shadow and wrath and grief, tearing Ultron’s core from his vibranium-laced primary. Wanda is, he knows, the only one on the Captain’s side who could kill him.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s lips feel numb as she asks, “Are you going to try to stop me?”

Vision shrugs. “Given how you tried to stop me from being born I think it would be fair.” He does not move to stop her.

Wanda’s eyes are deep and dark, and the ring of scarlet near the pupil is the only thing stopping them from being black in the dark of the room. Her hand strokes over the cradle, over the lights marking out her brother’s body. “I need him,” She says, simply. “I need him back. I cannot go on alone.” She knows that Vision has every reason to stop this. He is on the other side, is the enemy, does not want her, capable of so much destruction and damage, to have an anchor driving her scarlet to sanity. She knows Vision is never cruel, and prays, through all her cathedral, that he understands.

 

* * *

 

Vision can see her mind’s dance. For all its stabbing, scything fury moments earlier, it is calm now, swaying with an eerie stillness. He is not sure if this is some play or ploy, some game aiming to win him. There is just Wanda’s mind, swaying, Wanda’s eyes, watching, and the room in shadow, and the Cradle, his cradle, glowing softly.

Vision’s head bows, just a little, and he moves to stand with Wanda. “I will not wake the others,” He says, “But I will not betray them further, and help you.”

The smile Wanda gives him is soft and sad, and the scarlet in her eyes goes from ring, to teardrop, to encircling ring. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro’s body comes quickly into existence, with the dancing of the lights, and the gift of the cell-sample she had found. The Cradle has all the power it will need, and Wanda’s scarlet darting down its circuits to ensure it does not pause. Wanda feels the moment her brother’s mind is complete, and sets to work.

She knows that, had she tried this before, she would have needed another mind to help her. Working without her brother has widened her scope, has taught her scarlet how to be more than it already is, has washed scarlet from corners of her mind she did not even know existed, and pulled it from deep wells that sink beneath even the depths of her crypts. Wanda is full of it, the scarlet lifeblood of her magic, and knows she could, if she chose, take Vision apart at every cell and every atom. That she could destroy the tower, storm the city, drive the whole world mad, if she wanted.

She does not want.

She presses her hands flat to the Cradle and forges a link, from her mind, long-lived, to her brothers brain-to-be, newborn. In her mind her form links together its long inhuman fingers to lift Pietro’s glowing orb. Wings spread wider still, and suck all scarlet out, so even if the dark-self brought herself forth from nothing she would have no power to use. The angel’s eyes open, and there is nothing they can see but red and silver and blue.

Wanda’s angel lifts out of her mind, and the silence of the cathedral is deafening.

 

* * *

 

Vision sees the moment Wanda leaves her mind. Sees her scarlet mind, ever moving, dancing, darting, a hub of beautiful brightness and magic moving, fade to the palest, palest cerise, the colour briefly bright before fading to pastel. He sees the bond she has formed, as yet unlit by movement, and sees her mind lift off and fall in a scarlet cascade to the soft-glowing mind in the Cradle.

In this moment he could kill her, if he wanted, and kill her brother in the doing. He could wipe out a weapon _in potentia_ and their present most dangerous opponent. He could. He could.

He couldn’t.

Wanda is shining bright and scarlet, and warmed to his burgundy where the others did not see him so soon as a person as Thor did. Wanda did not flinch from him when he offered to take her from the rock her brother had died on. Wanda did not flinch when he offered her aid in training. Wanda’s powers are unique, Wanda is hurting, Wanda is, Wanda _is_.

 _You think therefore you are_ , His mind says. _She thinks therefore she is._

He knows he cannot destroy her.

 

* * *

 

Wanda holds her scarlet deathly, painfully close as she enters the body’s mind. She knows if she let it her scarlet would pool into the nooks and crannies of this brain’s space, that she would leave a scarlet taint even without meaning. She loops her scarlet tight around her, as ropes, as silks, as threads of rubies and garnets and crimson tourmaline. She holds her black and gold tighter, wears the onyx her dark-self favours, and steps on a clear and silent pool toward the waiting island.

The ripples sing outwards, sing back as they hit the bounds of the mind, and Wanda knows they will sing louder and clearer when she sets her brother in place. She holds the orb, cradled in the long-fingered hands of her angel, and sets it on the island.

And from an island is made a world.

 

* * *

 

Vision holds in a gasp, when he sees the mind alight with blue, Wanda’s scarlet a tiny single speck in all the swirling silver, but his eyes still dilate, tiny gears zooming his gaze in and out, for all this sight comes from his Stone and not something so simple. He sees the silver encircle the scarlet, interlink and interloop with it, tethered still to Wanda’s scarlet as she tugs growing silver threads through the bridge back to her mind.

And then she cuts them.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s shoulders hunch, a sob is forced out and holds the cut threads as delicately as she can. They are set by the angel into a shrine, wrapped about a relic, set in the very centre of a monstrance. Pietro’s mind, new born, new remade, new in all but memory twists in pain and in confusion, and Wanda sends a wave of soothing scarlet.

 _It’s alright_ , She sends, and holds back a sob. _I promise._

She reaches down the bond, and finds the next part of her brother’s mind she must excise.

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s hands are twisted scarlet on the Cradle, like a surgeon’s embedded in an operation. Wanda’s shoulders try to curl in on themselves, heave once with a sob before she straightens, and her hands warp the world again.

Vision can see what she is doing, pruning the tree of her brother’s mind, taking leaf and branch and monkey and bird through her bridge back to her cathedral and storing the silver in her scarlet safety. He can _see_ it, see it happening, but he cannot understand.

“Wanda?” Vision’s voice is soft, but he sees the single tendril which reaches briefly towards him. “Wanda, what are you doing?”

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s eyes close when Vision asks her that, and lead rises from her stomach to her throat as she turns her head to look at the one she might have called friend.

Her scarlet and his golden stone are the only light in the room, and the glow of her scarlet is caught in the teartracks on her face. It is hard for Wanda to speak around the lead in her throat, around each tear blurring her scarlet gaze.

“I am breaking him to save him,” She says, and her face twists into sorrow.

 

* * *

 

Vision did not think her capable of that. He knows she was interlinked with her brother, that Pietro was an anchor to her for all he ran faster than any anchor was meant to even consider. He knew that Pietro’s death had very nearly killed Wanda, that for each other they would do anything, anything at all, but never hurt each other.

He cannot understand and asks, quietly, “ _Why?_ ”

Wanda’s face is unspeakably sad. The room is dark around them, but for Vision’s gold and Wanda’s scarlet, and the shadows seem almost to loop into Wanda’s hair, scarlet lights her tears, gold catches in her eyes by the deep crimson always waiting, and her hands still work and turn over the Cradle, like a surgeon’s in a body.

Vision can hear the sob in her words, could have heard it if she had been speaking Sokovian instead of English, Latin instead of either, some language he did not know, but her words carried all the sorrow of a year’s loss of everything she had known.

“I don’t have a _choice_.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda takes apart her brother’s mind with careful precision, the most delicate touch. She takes his waywardness, his teasing, his willingness to fight, and tucks them into the shrines and amongst the candles and candelabra of her mind.

In the oubliette beneath the cathedral, beneath the crypts, Wanda’s dark-self sends scything shadows.

 _This is **wrong**_ , She sends. _We said we would never do this to a mind again, least of all his. He is **ours**._

Wanda’s throat is filled with lead, her eyes with tears, and her cathedral and congregation are singing scarlet sorrow.

 _Sometimes_ , She says, _Betrayal is necessary._

The dark-self rises, pulls herself from her oubliette, and pulls shadows with her. _This is not just **betrayal**. You are **mutilating** him._

Wanda sobs, and scarlet teardrops fill her cathedral, raining down. _I know_ , She says. _I don’t have a choice. We cannot lose him again._

The dark-self is quiet. _No_ , She says. _No, we cannot._

 

* * *

 

Vision watches as Wanda takes her brother's mind apart, piece by tiny piece, and secretes them all separately in shrines of scarlet. There is a delicacy to it, for all her scarlet makes her hands look as bloodied as a surgeon's or a butcher's. When she is done so too is the cradle, and Pietro is woken from death.

 

* * *

 

"What happened?" Asks Pietro.

Wanda's head tilts, looks into Pietro's blue eyes and checks to see what there is of her brother remaining in the fragmented shell she has made of him. "I brought you back from death."

"Why?" He asks. His tone is peaceful, his eyes filled with only curiosity. Wanda already misses the ineffable  _something_ that defined her brother's gaze.

"Because there is a war," She says, "and I cannot go on without you."

Pietro's head turns, glances to Vision, and then back to Wanda. "Should we fight?"

Wanda's hand cups his cheek almost instantly. "No," She breathes. "No, you mustn't." There are tears already falling, and Pietro's thumbs rise to wipe them away. "I cannot lose you again," Wanda says. Pietro nods, and his hands drop to his sides. Wanda presses a kiss her brother's brow, and sighs.

 

* * *

 

Vision watches as Wanda’s own mind argues with her, as scarlet harvests silver from its home and makes pliable Pietro who never was.

Vision watches Wanda weave her mind to wholeness, and take her brother by the hand and leave the tower.

Vision watches after them, and wonders if he might have helped Wanda, had he not chosen the wrong side.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are much much much appreciated!


End file.
